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Reinventing the wheel: MIT’s "music sharing network"

If you can get the words "sharing" and "network" into a project, you might …

If you can get the words "sharing" and "network" into a project, you might make a splash with just about anything. That's essentially what's happened with a novel "music sharing" network pioneered at MIT. Being hailed by some journalists as the "answer" to P2P problems, the Library Access to Music Project (LAMP) has a few people forgetting what the point of digital music is. LAMP is, admittedly, a pretty cool project. Using the MIT cable TV network, songs from a databank of music are accessible by students and faculty via the TV, not unlike cable's "on-demand" features. 16 channels are reserved for use, which means that at any given time 16 different people can be in control of the various channels (but only 16, mind you). The legality of the "network" stems from the fact that the music is being broadcast in analog form, at a quality above FM, but certainly below that of quality encoded MP3s. In a sense, it's like a radio station that you tune in via your TV, but you have no ads, and may have full control.

We are transmitting music over the non-digital portion of MIT's internal cable television system. Because it is impossible to record exact copies of CDs from a non-digital cable television system, under the copyright law the licensing requirements are less stringent than for over the Internet: similar to the requirements for radio stations. MIT, like most universities and radio stations, pays for blanket licenses from the three organizations -- ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC -- that have the power to authorize analog transmissions of virtually all songs. These blanket licenses cost about 60 cents per student per year in total, including cable television rights.

It's a great idea, and I wish I would have had something like this when I was in college. However, this is no answer to the P2P problem. First of all, you are tied to the TV. The portability of music is ignored by this scheme. Even with decent speakers, I'd rather have music on my computer stored in a superior format. You could, of course, record the stream if you really wanted to, but it's quality is lackluster. At that rate, you could buy a $20 FM USB tuner, and record stuff just as well?yet who is doing that? Again, this is a great thing for students who want to have access to all kinds of stuff, but this is no P2P solution. But then, that's where the whole copyright debacle has landed us: a technically simple music distribution system is supposedly a step in the right direction when its ultimate product, inferior analog music, is a considerable step back.

The real test for LAMP, I think, will be in the legal system. LAMP in effect exploits the so-called "analog hole," attempting to ease the powers that be by broadcasting analog content that can't be tracked. In a world where certain folks think that everything should be locked down with DRM, one can't really see the RIAA appreciating such "rogue" radio stations distributing content over a medium that they don't necessarily have a tap on. This NYTimes quote some up the circus pretty well:

If that back-to-the-future solution seems overly complicated, blame copyright law and not MIT, said Jonathan Zittrain, who teaches Internet law at Harvard and is a director of the university's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The most significant thing about the MIT plan, he said, is just how complicated it has to be to fit within the odd boundaries of copyright law. "It's almost an act of performance art," Zittrain said. Winstein, he said, has "arrayed the gerbils under the hood so it appears to meet the statutory requirement"--and has shown how badly the system of copyright needs sensible revamping.

Indeed.

Ken Fisher
Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation. Emailken@arstechnica.com//Twitter@kenfisher